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Conversation/Chat on Technological Trash and Related Ideas between NoahFischer and Gene McHugh.11:31 AM Gene: so -how did you get interested in thinking about technology and junk?your new pieces seem to be a sort of post-apocalyptic depiction of high tech gone bad.11:32 AM Noah: yes, I saw the two extremes of the tech/design process: the i-phone ofdesire on one hand (and all the advertising that goes with it) and the 7 year-old beigemonitors in trash piles on the other, on their way to China to be melted down in toxicvillages on the other: really the utopian and dystopian together.Gene: have you researched the "life" of the computer much...i think the birth of thesilicon in california being sent to china to be manufactured, returned to california to dieand then sent back to china is sort of beautiful and tragicutopian and dystopian.11:34 AM Noah: yeah that is compelling and as we begin to understand this thing calledGlobalism more, it is sort of a touching story that emergesI mean, when I saw images of "gleaning" the parts from old monitors in China, that wasunexpected because it's so lo-tech, almost pastoral-So with photographs by Andreas Gursky or especially Edward Burtynsky you have theBIG IMAGE of this new landscape, that’s the form they choose.I am trying to "muddy" the form more, to problematize and create a self consciouslanguage to talk about the utopian/dystopian mix.11:36 AM Gene: can you talk a bit more about the idea of language?Noah: in what aspect of the work?11:38 AM Gene: for instance the iphones you're fabricating take the basic iphone design,but you create a sort of semiotics out of the new shapes you create.Sort of materializing the language that is implicit but difficult to decipher in the originaldevices.11:41 AM Noah: that's right...language is important in all of my work- I've often workedwith it literally as in the speech analysis in Rhetoric Machine.Gene: rhetoric - the rhetoric surrounding environmentalism is also something we've beendiscussingit gets lost in an ecology of other rhetorics11:43 AM Noah: right- that's the case in Pop Ark.and in that case I was looking more broadly at rhetoric, not just from the top down11:46 AM Gene: it shows that information or rhetorical ecologies can also become"polluted" or so overwhelmed with noise, that it becomes difficult to know what is usefulinformation from what is garbageNoah: absolutely, so there is language trash....11:48 AM Gene: yeah and with the web, the amount of language trash we deal with hasrapidly expandedNoah: I think that at the moment, the culture is still figuring out how to define let alonedeal with Spam-as it overwhelms us. The new trash that always accompanies industrialshifts is never fully recognized.But to get back to language, with the new work about monitors I am thinking about agrey area between language and design. You can certainly say that Modernist/Minimalistdesign it is broadly desired...But maybe just people versed in the basics of design, whostudied it in art school for example, feel comfortable with it as a language the way thatmost people exist within written language.Gene: so the idea is to create disinformation surrounding the semiotics of designi think your iphone pieces go a long way to doing that.11:51 AM Noah: I think you said it very well - sort of short circuiting the rhetoricimplicit in the design with another another kind of languageI mean, the point is to get some perspective on all of this- the very fast movingcontemporary process, right?11:54 AM Gene: yeah, i think the role of the artist becomes importantthere is official rhetoricand then the artist has to come along and shake things uptry to puncture a hole in the mass of rhetorical mess that we've dug ourselves intothe nightly news isn't up to the task11:58 AM Noah: absolutely not!Gene: haha12:00 PM Noah: the nightly news is an addiction mechanism on which I amunfortunately hookedGene: hey a bit off topic, but did you see the photograph of sarah palin in an americanflag bikini holding a gun poolside?Noah: yeah you know its photoshopped12:01 PM Gene: oh fucki was hoping notNoah: no, you can see the original image of a much younger woman.Palin probably looks better in real lifeGene: yeah she's kind of hot, right?12:02 PM Noah: I knowGene: the sexy librarian thingNoah: it was a master move in so many ways12:04 PM Gene: there's nothing more american than aerial wolf huntingNoah: nope- that is like mythologically AmericanGene: the first reality television candidate12:05 PM Gene: it's funny how we're trying to resist this sarah palin charade and talkabout rhetoric but here we are knee deep in it and hungry for morei guess the point is to maintain some level of perspective, but not be "above" itNoah: Yeah I can't resist...Well I make it a point not to have internet in my studio, I go there and try to focusGene: that's smarti'm totally hookedNoah: I hear you brotherstaring into the monitor a lot?Gene: yep – exactlyit's not an object, it's a warm, mothering light beckoning forth12:07 PM Noah: exactly, if we deconstruct it, we have a nice lantern to gaze into:the mothering light as you say...Gene: i've always liked this idea of ancient societies staring into the flickering campfireand telling stories and how this has simply mutated into televisions and now iphones andwhatnotsophisticated campfires12:09 PM Noah: I think about that too- funny actually how campfires are somesmerizingGene: they really arei went camping a couple of weeks ago, couldn't take my eyes off the fireNoah: something about the idea of infinity- no flame ever the samethere is some promise of infinite yet looping entertainment-as in the daily news forexampleGene: yeah, infinite jestthat's a good book12:11 PM Noah: I started itcouldn't focus...Gene: i have a hard time with novels these days, non-fiction’s easierNoah: that's interesting- nonfiction is feeding our information hungry brainslike filling up at the gas station for the info economyGene: haYeah - information really is a drug12:13 PM Gene: i think the early cyberpunk stuff had it right - we're a bunch ofdegenerate junkies basicallyNoah: for surelike in that Woody Allen movie where he imagines people of the future interacting withthat drug-orbGene: oh sleeperNoah: rightGene: that shit is hilarious12:15 PM Noah: yeah, starting at the monitor could look like that to people of the futureor past...actually, starting at the monitor laughing, smiling, frowningGene: i just need a little line of drool coming down my chinNoah: go for itGene: yeah maybe i willNoah: haGene: meh, too self-conscious nowmaybe later todayNoah: okNoah Fischer is a Brooklyn based artist represented by Claire Oliver Gallery.Gene McHugh is finishing his Masters degree at the center for Curatorial Studies at BardCollege.